Toddler Busy Bags

I came across the idea for toddler busy bags on Pinterest, and I also have seen ideas for these on Etsy.  Each bag contains materials for an activity to work on certain concepts, such as letter recognition, counting, colors, or shapes.  A few of them also help with fine motor development.  I put together some of these activity bags for Eli based on some of my favorite ideas I found while searching online.  

 

 Color sort

 Sticker color sort 

(Finally a purposeful use of stickers for him!  He LOVES stickers.  

Always with his tongue out for concentration.)

Sticker patterns

Build a pizza

The brown menu cards show how many of each ingredient to put on the pizza.

Using bingo daubers to fill in outlines of the letters

This idea came from a whole list of activities you can do with materials you already have at home.  This one uses Play-Doh on the bottom with a toothpick on top that you can use to build a tower of Cheerios (and count at the same time!).

Name recognition using letters attached to clothespins

Lego towers

The map shows which colors of Legos to use to build towers in order to reach a certain number

Color matching using paint chips

(As I was putting this activity together, I wondered how they come up with so many different names for all those shades of each color, especially when so many of the shades are so similar!)

Shape sort

Another idea involves creating an ABC book that includes pictures familiar to your kid, such as people they know or things they are interested in that begin with each letter of the alphabet and even pictures that include them related to the letters.  I created a photo book on the Shutterfly site (and used the 40% off coupon code!) based on this idea of the sample below, although I am still waiting to receive it in the mail.